/ 



SPEECH 



MR. W. E. FORSTER, M.R, , r 



In 



THE SLAVEHOLDERS' REBELLION 



AND 



PROFESSOR GGLDWIN SMITH'S 
LETTER 

ON 

HE MORALITY OF THE EMANCIPATION 
PROCLAMATION 



MANCHESTER : 
UNION AND EMANCIPATION SOCIETY'S DEPOT 
51, PICCADILLY. 

1863. 



SPEECH OF MR. W. E. FORSTER, M.P., 



At a Meeting held at Leeds on Wednesday, September 23rd, 1863, in 



Policy of the British Government, 



Mr. W. E. Forster, M.P., was received with enthusiastic cheering, and after 
a few introductory remarks referring to the misunderstanding which existed 
upon the question of the present struggle, and to the fear that another evil 
might be added to it leading to a difference between England and America, 
he said : Just allow me to say one or two words upon this misunderstanding 
in both countries. First, as regards ourselves. I think that a great deal of 
ill-feeling — which I am sorry to see — exists in America, arises from a con- 
sciousness, and in some measure a right-founded consciousness, on their part, 
that we misconceive this great struggle in its very principle and in its foun- 
dation, and that we have, if I may so speak, underrated it. (Hear, hear.) 
I do not mean that we underrate it in point of the numbers engaged in it. 
We are quite impressed with the tremendous extent to which the war is 
carried on. In point of numbers it is greater than almost any other civil war 
in any age. (Hearj hear.) We are aware also of the immense sufferings 
which it has caused in America, and which it has caused also in our own 
country ; and we are aware of the tremendous loss of life and money ; but 
many of us, I regret to say, are not alive to the tremendous importance of 
the principle which is at stake — (cheers) — which is, if I may put it in just one 
sentence, simply this, whether, upon the continent of America the principle 
of slavery or the principle of freedom shall predominate. (Cheers.) .Now look 
back at history, and can you put your finger upon any war that was ever 
carried on in which a greater question was at stake than that ? (Cheers.) 
Many persons say, "Its no use going to hear you; you are a strong 
Federalist." In answer to that I may say that I am not in every sense a 
Federalist. (Hear, hear.) I am not blind to the faults of the North. (Hear, 
hear. ) I am not blind to the inconsistency with which this war has been 
carried on ; nor am I blind to the w.ords which some of the statesmen and 
many of the papers have used towards this country. (Hear, hear.) But I 
still remember this, that they are, many of them, it is true, quite uncon- 
sciously, yet that they are fighting — and cannot help fighting — the battle for 
freedom against the Southern Confederacy, who avowedly and determinedly, 
and without any attempt at concealment, are fighting the battle of slavery. 
-Men tell me I am fanatical upon this question. I do not feel that I owe an 
apology to an English audience for being fanatical on the question of slavery 
(Hear, hear.) As to whether there shall be liberty in this world, is a ques- 
tion upon which no man can be fanatical. (Hear, hear.) Of all political 
questions which can be brought forward — I will say nothing of philanthropic 
considerations — this question of freedom from slavery is the most important. 



Support of Union and Emancipation in America, and the Neutral 




4 



(Clieers. ) There are men — I confess it fills one with wonder and surprise — 
men who have done good service to the liberal cause in past times — who 
have fought hard for that cause — who yet profess that it is fanaticism to care 
whether slavery shall or shall not rule over the continent of America. (Hear, 
hear.) They go so far as to say, that it is possible that there can be political 
liberty where there is domestic slavery. Now, I say that is a great mistake. 
(Cheers.) If men would learn the very alphabet of freedom, they would see 
that wherever there is domestic slavery, wherever the first political right — a 
right even above and beyond all politics — the right of man to the disposal of 
his own body, and the government of his own soul — (cheers) — where that is 
denied by the law, political liberty is not safe. (Cheers.) If it be formed by 
the master class, that class cannot keep it in safety, and the very words 
"political liberty" are a farce and a delusion. (Cheers.) History proves 
that it was because the old republicans of Eome allowed themselves to be 
corrupted into domestic slavery that the master class lost their own liberty — 
(hear, hear) — and we find that in the South where the slaveholders had power, 
to use Carlyle's expression, to hire then fellow-creatures for life — not merely 
hiring their labour, but hiring the chastity of the women, and the souls and 
the brains of the men — that is to do what they would with that honour, 
mind, brain, and soul — (hear, hear) — when they did that to one class they at 
the same time deprived their white fellow-citizens, — deprived themselves of 
the freedom of speech, the freedom of the press, and almost of the freedom of 
thought. (Cheers. ) There is no more true fact than this, and I do not care 
if I am again charged with fanaticism for repeating it, that if you look at 
this question calmly and philosophically, you will find that when this system 
of domestic slavery is once admitted in any social fabric whatever, it so fastens 
itself upon its frame work that it is utterly impossible that it can live in 
peace with it unless it masters it. (Hear, hear.) It must master it, or it 
will go to war with it, and strive to break it up. (Hear, hear.) That was 
the case in America. Three years ago I looked forward to the future of the 
United States with fear and trembling — I did not know what punishment 
God would inflict upon them for having connived at this sin of slavery. 
(Hear, hear.) Every one saw that that slave power had been first stealthily 
and then openly endeavouring to master the Union, and to use every power 
in the Union for the extension of slavery ; that it hung upon the balance 
whether the great Republic of America was to be a great power, for the 
spread of freedom, as we in England had hoped, or for the spread of slavery 
and its extension and perpetuation throughout the world, — whether the whites 
of America would not loose their freedom in selling themselves to the slave- 
holders of the South. (Applause.) The freemen of the North took fright ; they 
found out what was going on ; they said, ' 1 This is no mere negro question, 
it is no mere philanthropic question" — and it would have been well for them 
and for their country if they had felt more strongly the philanthropic part of 
the question and the just claims of the negro ; but at least they saw the 
danger to their country, and said, " We will not allow this slave-power to 
go on increasing ; we will make head against it ; we will take care that it 
does not rule us." (Cheers.) What followed ? The slaveholders^ finding thai 
they could no longer wield the American commonwealth to support the. 
system of slavery, said, " We will break up and destroy the Union, and set 
up a Confederacy of our own." The men of the North, the patriots of the 
Union, said, "We will not submit to that," and we, many of us in England, 
who were utterly reckless of money or life when we thought Russia merely 
threatened to stop the communication with our Eastern possessions — who 
were still more reckless of money and life to preserve our empire in India — 
when we know that there is scarcely one of us in this country, of any party, 
who would not, if it came to the dire alternative, use every power he pos- 



Sessed to keep Ireland in union with. England — yet we who know that we 
have this patriotic feeling, and would undergo the greatest sacrifices before 
we would allow our country to be cut to pieces or diminished, or to become 
a weak Power, rather than a strong Power, — we complained of the North 
A mericans and said to them, "You have entered upon a wicked war," because 
ney would not allow the slaveholders of the South, in order to perpetuate 
and extend slavery, to break up their country, and make it a divided, a weak, 
and almost powerless country, instead of a great and powerful one. (Loud 
cheers. ) I say this, that I will give many of those who argue thus the credit, 
that if the same result, or anything like it, was upon the issue in England, 
they would be as foremost in desiring to prevent their country from being 
destroyed as the most ardent Northerner at this moment. (Hear, hear.) 
That is the way in which this dreadful war has come to pass. I mourn over 
that war ; I lament it. I also think it a wicked war ; but I charge the wicked- 
ness upon those who began the war in the worst of all possible causes. 
(Cheers.) I am willing to allow that even with them — for a strange thing is 
human nature — some of them may have forced themselves into the belief 
that they were in a good cause. I don't pretend to deny the valour of the 
men of the South ; I will not deny that they have shown mairy fine qualities 
in this war, I will go even farther, and say that it is very difficult for men, 
even in a bad cause, to have submitted to the sacrifices and self-denial which 
many men in the South have undergone, without coming out of it purified 
and better than when they went in. But whilst that is the case, I cannot 
forget upon which side the right is — (hear, hear) — though I lament more than 
I can speak the suffering which is the result of this war, and the crimes which 
have been committed on both sides, for in the presence of an influential 
American, Pev. Mr. Channing, I cannot but say it would be well if the 
public opinion of America were raised more strongly against the atrocities 
committed in the Northern States, as well as in. the Southern. (Hear.) I am 
well aware that in a tremendous crisis like this there are strong temptations, 
and that even Christian and patriotic people find it difficult to carry on war 
other than with that ferocity which, more or less, always accompanies war ; 
still, great as are the temptations, Christians must not forget their duty. 
Nevertheless, I say much as we lament this war, its sufferings and crimes, I 
do from the very bottom of my heart rejoice at what we may now hope will 
be the result of it. (Applause.) After many changes up and down, after it 
had appeared as if this slave power would be victorious and triumphant, and 
that we should in this nineteenth century see successful the attempt to raise 
a great new fabric, whose corner-stone was slavery— (and such an attempt to 
retard the course of progress has not been made since Julian attempted to 
stop the progress of Christianity), — at last a change has come. Look for a 
moment at what would have been the case if the slave power had succeeded, 
and we had been left to Mr. Gladstone's hope, that in its success there 
would be its failure. I believe there would eventually have been a failure if 
the South had been triumphant. They would have raised against them the 
public opinion of the world, and freedom would have been triumphant 
eventually, because there is a God that rules the world, and not a devil 
(Loud cheers ) But horrible as is now the contest, it would then have been 
even more terrible, for the slave power would have been stronger ; and now 
that the contest has come, I rejoice that we can foresee this result, that, what- 
ever else comes out of it, whether a restored Union, which does not now 
seem impossible, or a subordinate, hemmed up, weak slaveholding republic 
in the Cotton States, this at least is certain— the dream of the slaveholders 
that a slave empire can exist has disappeared, and out of this war we shall 
get this compensation, that on the continent of America the power and prin- 
ciples of freedom will rule, and not the power and principle of slavery. 




(Renewed cheers.) i think it just arises from our losing sight of the question 
at issue that we have treated this American struggle in a manner which has 
not unnaturally excited ill feeling in that country, and I think the more we 
can hear from intelligent Americans who understand our country as well as 
their own, and who can tell us facts upon this American struggle, the more 
we 3hall be able to get to a good understanding of it, and therefore to remove 
that ill feeling. (Rear, hear.) I have now, what I scarcely ever had before, 
the opportunity of speaking in public to an American, and Mr. Channing 
must allow me to say a word or two to him, and through him, to some of his 
countrymen. It may be that Englishmen do not quite understand the 
feeling of the Americans, and I think in America also there is some miscon- 
ception and misunderstanding of the action of England. There is a feeling 
in America, if we may judge by the papers and the statements of the leading 
men, that England has done them a wrong — an actual and positive wrong 
which it is their business, almost their duty, to revenge when they have the 
opportunity. I say that is not the case. 1 don't mean that there have not 
been men in England who have taken the side of the South. There have 
been many, especially in what are called the upper classes, but after all, it is 
not for the speeches of men, even if they have Hon. or Noble stuck before 
their names, that the country must be responsible, nor is it for writing- 
in newspapers that we must be held responsible. Mr. Channing would 
not like me to make him or his country responsible for the writing of 
the New York Herald. (Laughter.) I don't compare the New York Herald 
to the Times or the Morning Herald, but I say the Americans should not 
make us responsible for anything written in the Times or Morning Herald. 
(Hear.) All we ought to be judged by is the action of the country, and as 
far as the action of the country is concerned — so far as we have acted in 
a national capacity, the Americans have little or no reason to find fault, 
and that is what they ought to bear in mind. (Hear, hear.) They also ought 
to remember, when their hearts rankle at any expression made by any of the 
upper classes of the country, how their cause has been viewed by the great 
masses of the people. (Hear. ) For every nobleman, for every man who has 
a title before hia name who has taken the side of the South, there have been 
ten, twenty, and even one hundred hard-working men who have taken the 
side of the North and freedom. (Cheers.) And they have done so with every 
temptation and every inducement brought to bear upon them to take the 
other side. They have been told by ingenious men — (I will not say sent for 
the purpose) — that their sufferings — and many of them have been suffering 
deeply — have been. caused by this war, and that the war has been caused by 
the action of the Federals, and yet such has been their instinctive feeling — 
for they know what liberty is, and ill will it be for England when the working 
men forget what liberty is — such has been their instinctive feeling that they 
have refused to be misled, and I do say it will be ungenerous of America to 
remember anything against England when we can point to that large meeting 
of the half-starving working men of Manchester in the Free Trade Hall — 
(cheers) -—which took the lead in saying, " No matter what the suffering we 
may endure, no matter what the sacrifices we may have to undergo, we will 
not allow our Government to depart from the strict principle of neutrality 
on behalf or the slaveholding Confederacy." (Loud applause.) Mr. Channing 
and his friends must also recollect that although there may have been expres- 
sions—talk in favour of the South, there has been no action. There has 
been talk in the House of Commons in its favour ; I have felt when in advo- 
cating a neutral policy I stated what I conceived to be the just claims of the 
North that I had not got the feeling of the House on my side ; but, on the 
other hand, if anyone tried to get the House of Commons to press upon the 
Government to depart from the principles of neutrality and adopt the side 



7 

of the South, the common sense of the House was proved to be against him. 
(Hear, hear.) I say, therefore, to the Americans, as wise men, you must pay 
little attention to mere talk or mere writing ; you must go by actions ; and 
judging them, we, as a nation, have done nothing against you. On the con- 
trary, I say, to the credit of our Government, and not merely to the credit of 
the leaders of the Whig party, but also to the credit of the leaders of the 
Tory party, and to Lord Derby especially, who, in his speech against recogni- 
tion at the beginning of the session, laid down in language which it was im- 
possible could fail to influence his party, that any premature recognition 
would be a breach of international law — it is owing to the action of the 
leaders of both parties that our Government has resisted the notoriously 
strong pressure on the part of France to depart from strict neutrality and 
recognise the South ; — (cheers) — and, therefore, instead of complaining of us, 
the Americans should remember that, as a nation, we have in that matter 
stood their friends. We have done no more than we ought to have done, 
but there is no doubt of it that we had our powerful and influential ally 
pressing us to recognise the South, and our Government refused to do it. 
(Hear, hear. ) I am well aware there is one matter in which we may have 
appeared to have departed from this neutrality, and that is in the sailing of 
the Alabama. That again was not the act of the Government. I think Earl 
Russell was caught napping — (laughter)— but I know he did not wish her to 
go out, and has done his utmost to prevent any others following her. I want 
to say a word or two on this shipping question. Let us forget that we are an 
anti-slavery meeting, and look at this question purely as Englishmen taking 
a selfish view of it, simply as it affects England's interests. I say that as a 
great maritime nation — the greatest commercial nation in the world— it is to 
our interests more than to those of any other nation that it should not be 
international law that ships may sail out of neutral ports to aid in belligerent 
operations such as the Alabama has engaged in, and which those two steam 
rams will do if they are not stopped. (Cheers.) I will just put a case in 
point. We had a war lately with Russia, and sent out the best fleet we could 
man under the best- Admiral we could find to Cronstadt. Why did we do so ? 
It was not that we supposed our fleet could batter down that fort. We also 
knew that in blockading Cronstadt we could not starve the trade of Russia, 
because it would only be a question of cost, and merchandise would be sent 
through Prussia by railway. But why we sent the fleet was, that we wanted 
to make our own trade and commerce safe throughout the world, and we said, 
" We will seal up the port of Cronstadt to prevent the Russian privateers 
and ships-of-war coming out and destroying our commerce." If we had 
allowed Alabamas to be the rule of international law, such a course would 
have been a pure waste of money, because, instead of sending out privateers 
from Cronstadt, Russia could send them from New York, Philadelphia, 
Hamburg, Havre, or any other part of the world. If we allow this to be- 
come international law, the result will be that whenever we carry on war we 
shall be obliged to do one of two things — either to blockade every large port 
of every nation in the world as well as the ports of the nation with which we 
are at war, or else to give up our commercial trade and carry our goods under 
the flags of other nations. There never was a case in which our interest was 
more clear than it is to have this stopped, and my great anxiety is lest this 
war should come to an end (which I trust it will do soon) before we have 
undone any harm which may have been done by our letting the Alabama go 
out ; for if we do not, depend upon it other countries will take advantage and 
use our own precedent against us. (Hear, hear,) I hope, therefore, this large 
meeting will do its best to strengthen the neutral policy of the Government 
on this question of ships. I do not deny that there are difficulties, which I 
wish Mr. Channing to remember, and this is the great difficulty, that w& 



8 



have always felt it a point of honour not to alter oiir laws at the dictation of 
any foreign country, and although we see that we must make this matter 
plain for our own interests, it is not an easy thing to do, but it is so evident- 
that I feel persuaded the common sense of the country will insist upon it, 
(Hear, hear.) Some people say, " What is the difference between sending" 
out a ship of war and sending out cannon and muskets ?" I don't mean to 
say that we should supply belligerents with muskets ; but in this case both 
sides have got them. But cannon and muskets cannot be used for belligerent 
purposes until they get into the hands of the belligerents, and whatever 
quantity of cannon or muskets be supplied, either to the Federals or the 
Confederates, they are useless until they get on to Federal or Confederate 
territory. Consequently, the one belligerent Government has the chance of 
stopping their entry, by blockading the ports of the other belligerent, and we 
may say if material of war enters it is the fault of the belligerent from its 
want of power or of activity to stop it. But the belligerent cannot guard 
thus against ships, because they never go into the ports, and if a neutral 
supplies such ships he is taking part in the war, and the only possible way 
in which the belligerent can stop this is by going to war with the neutral. 
What we have to aim at, therefore, is to prevent our subjects sending out 
from our ports armaments which are to be used for belligerent purposes before 
they go into a belligerent port. That is the problem our Government and 
law makers have to solve, and which the common sense and interests of the 
country will compel them to solve. (Hear.) I trust you will strengthen the 
hands of the Government in that matter. Efforts have been made to secure 
a premature recognition ; they have been fruitless, and very much owing to 
the stand which Lord Derby and others took in the early part of the session. 
But another effort is making, not so much in England as by our great ally, the 
Emperor. We have hitherto avoided interference against all sorts of tempta- 
tions ; don't let us be dragged into it to serve the purposes of the French 
Emperor. (Cheers. ) To use homely language, he has got into a mess with 
his expedition to Mexico. (Rear.) I am sorry we had anything to do with 
that Mexican business, but we had at least the sense to draw out of it very 
quickly. (Hear.) He went on with it, believing what was said in many 
quarters, that the Confederates were sure to succeed. It now appears by no 
means certain that the Confederates will succeed, and he finds himself with 
the new Mexican Empire on his back, does not know how to bear the load, 
and wants to shove the burden on the English people. (Laughter.) Don't let 
us take any part of that burden. I am no advocate of the Monroe doctrine, 
and think they have uttered a great deal of nonsense in America respecting- 
it, but it is no business of ours in any way to support the Emperor in his 
Mexican conquest, for it is nothing else. As to the declaration of the 
Mexican people that they desire a change of government, it is only a declara- 
tion of a few of the people afraid of the French bayonets. (Hear.) I see 
it is stated, though I hope we shall 'have an explanation from Government, 
that we have something to do with pressing the Archduke Maximilian to put 
himself in the position of becoming a French protected Emperor in Mexico, 
if an Austrian Archduke has not got that sense of family pride which would 
prevent his accepting the rule of a people by the help of the great rival of 
his family, don't let him hereafter be able to say, " You induced me to put 
myself in this false position." The fact is, that the Emperor of the French 
knows that when this war is ended he will find it difficult to keep up his 
power over Mexico, unless he has a Southern Confederacy between himself 
and the Union; so he starts a new idea, for which he wants the French people- 
to go to war. This idea, as it is expressed in a publication I purchased in 
Paris, and which is supposed to be written partly from his inspiration, is "to 
counterbalance the Anglo-Saxon race, and give the Latin race their chance 



upon the continent of America." (Laughter.) That may or may not be a 
fantastic or a reasonable idea, but it is an idea for which we are not going to 
lose any money or blood to carry it out in Mexico. Therefore, I say, if there 
be, as it is supposed there are, attempts to induce us even now, at the last 
hour, to recognise the South, there never was a clearer case than that our 
Government, which has preserved neutrality until this moment, should not 
be dragged into intervention by French intrigue to suit French purposes. 
(The hon. gentleman sat down amidst loud cheers.) 



PKOFESSOK GOLDWIN SMITH 

ON THE 

MORAIOT OF THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION. 

[TJiis Letter has been revised by the Author for present publication.'] 



TO THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY NEWS. 

Sir, — It is desirable on all accounts that we should have a clear view as 
to the lawfulness of Mr. Lincoln's conduct in giving freedom to the slaves, 
which I see is still denounced as a flagrant breach of morality, even by- 
writers who profess to stand neutral between the North and the South. My 
heart is on the side of the Northerns. All the less would I abet them in 
sullying our cause by injustice.! 

This struggle is a great revolution, which, commenced by the slaveowner 
for the perpetuation and extension of slavery, has ended in bringing liberty 
to the slave. Revolutions, happily for the world, are anomalies ; and the acts 
of those engaged in them must be judged, not without regard to morality, 
but by a moraliby broad enough to embrace an anomalous situation. The 
relations of the two parties to each other are neither strictly those of fellow- 
citizens nor strictly those of alien enemies : their measures, therefore, will 
not be exactly comformable to either character, and the apparent incon- 
sistency will afford matter for a. large display of triumphant but sterile criti- 
cism to those who persist in judging extraordinary cases by ordinary rules. 
To tell Mr. Lincoln that he is bound to deal with the Confederates either as 
alien enemies or as common offenders against the law, and either to take no 
political measures at all with regard to them, or to hang them all as traitors, 
is simply to show that there are some very important phenomena in the poli- 
tical world which your philosophy does not yet comprehend. 

The objects of a revolutionary war are partly military, partly political ; 
and its necessities, which form the limit of the measures morally justifiable in 
it, correspond to its double object. Now it appears to me that Mr. Lincoln's 
act in giving freedom to the slaves is morally justifiable, both on the ground 
of military and of political necessity. 

First as to the military question. Is the emancipation of an enemy's 
slaves justifiable as a measure of war ? We had better not be too hasty in 
embracing the negative side of this question. We have already, in our eager- 
ness to condemn, at any price, the conduct of a great commonwealth, laid 
down principles on the subject of secession which would leave us without the 
shadow of a plea for forcibly retaining Ireland in the Union. If the Confe- 
deracy is established, and we continue to crusade against the slave trade and 
to protect communities of free negroes in the West Indies, we may have 
reason to wish that we had not been so forward in curtailing the rights of 
war against a Slave Power. 



11 



In a Slave State the slaves are the sinews of war. Their forced labour 
feeds the armies and enables almost the whole of the free population to take 
the field. They sustain the contest in the most effective manner. Yet they 
are not consenting parties to it, because they have no free will. Are you, 
then, forbidden to bestow on them, if you can, the freedom of will, which 
when they have received, they will not only cease to act against you, but 
probably stop the war. 

Not only are the slaves the sinews of war in the Slave States, but if you 
cannot lawfully sever the connection between them and their masters by 
emancipation, they are of all sinews of war the toughest and most difficult 
to subdue. A free labouring population, having a will of its own, will, after 
the stress of war has been put on it up to a certain point, succumb, and force 
its rulers to succumb ; and you will thus obtain the peace which you desire. 
But a population of slave labourers, having no will of its own, cannot 
succumb. Whatever stress you may put upon it by your military operations, 
it must go on feeding the war so long as the masters, who are reckless of 
the slave's suffering, may choose. Thus, Slave States, if you may not draw 
they will have this advantage, in the legal phrase, ' ' of their own wrong. " 
away their slaves, will have a great advantage in war over Free States ; and 
They will be the most indomitable, because their system is the most unjust. 

It is remarkable that ^lave States themselves have never had a doubt 
on the point. They have always looked upon the disaffection of the slave 
population as a weak point in their armour, of which an enemy must be 
expected, as a matter of course, to take advantage. Probably the consciousness 
of this has somewhat restrained them in their ill-treatment of their slaves, 
and certainly it has placed a check upon their inherent propensity to aggression 
with which the world cannot afford gratuitously to part. ' No Athenian, when 
at war with Lacedsemon, ever scrupled to raise the Helots. No Lacedsemonian, 
when invading Attica, ever scrupled to draw off the slaves. Nor was a protest 
against the use of this weapon ever heard on either side, though both sides 
suffered greatly from it, and though the Greeks generally were in the habit of 
protesting against anything which they regarded as a violation of the rights of 
war. We may be told that the Greeks were heathens, and that their morality 
was not sound. It was sound enough on the question of slavery, from the slave- 
owner's point of view ; and if people choose to keep up the practices of 
heathenism in the midst of Christendom they must accept heathen liabilities 
at the same time. But we need not go back to the Greeks and Romans. We 
ourselves proclaimed freedom to the slaves in the American war ; and the 
American slaveowners at that time, though much alarmed and exasperated, 
never thought of protesting against the measure as a violation of the rights 
of war. 

In the present case the slaves have been used not only to supply the 
armies with food and munitions of war, but for the construction of forts, for 
driving baggage and ammunition trains, and for other directly military 
purposes ; and this under general requisitions of the government. A few of 
them have been even made to serve in the ranks ; and it has been in con- 
templation to call out the whole. Let us admit for the moment the monstrous 
doctrine, solemnly repudiated by England, that one man can be the private 
property of another ; still even private property is liable to military confisca- 
tion if it is employed, or intended to be employed, for the purposes of war. 

I am not aware to what extent these principles as to the sanctity of 
slavery in case of war are carried. Suppose you invade a slave country and 
the slaves come over to you, are you forbidden to receive them 1 Must you 
honourably return them to their owners like a runaway horse 1 If so, 
oppression may sleep secure. 



To proclaim freedom to the slave is not to proclaim a servile war. At 
least we did not think so when we proclaimed freedom to the slaves in the 
West Indies. Surely it is time that people should exert sufficient control over 
then delirious malignity to abstain from painting purely fictitious pictures of 
universal massacre, rape, and pillage, and shrieking to each other over these 
creations of their own frenzied imagination. The emancipated slaves have 
not, during the whole time that has elapsed since the proclamation, perpetrated 
a tenth part of the acts of cruelty on their masters that their masters per- 
petrated on them in a week. In the single instance, so far as we know, of 
the murder of slaveowners by emancipated negroes, the crimma's have been 
brought to justice. Arms have not been put into the hands of slaves, except 
under white officers, carefully selected by the government, who compel their 
troops to observe the rules of war. The negro soldiers are not accused, I 
believe, of having emulated in any single instance the ferocity with which 
they have been treated by the Confederates. If the negroes are an inferior 
race, it is a pity that they cannot, in some respects, bring certain other races 
down to their level. 

That the emancipation of the slaves is a measure of political necessity, 
if the political object of the war is to be attained by the Federal party, can 
scarcely admit of a doubt. It has been made manifest by these events — it 
has in effect been declared by the slaveowners themselves, that the existence 
of the slaveowning oligarchy is incompatible with the principles on which the 
American commonwealth is founded. This fact has, I believe, now com- 
pletely dawned on the minds of the party in the North who, being anxious 
only to save the commonwealth, and careless of the interests of the slave, 
would have been ready, had it been possible, to restore the Union on the 
understanding that with regard to slavery things should remain on the same 
footing as before. Things cannot remain on the same footing as before. The 
oligarchical propensities and tyrannical passions which slaveowning inevitably 
engenders in the great slaveowners are radically and hopelessly opposed to the 
recognition of equal rights, and the ascendancy of equal law. ' ' Slavery, subor- 
dination, and government," cannot live in the same land with the principles 
proclaimed in the American Constitution. Wisdom and humanity alike 
forbid a precipitate resort to civil war ; but when you have resorted to civil 
war, or rather when civil war has been forced upon you, wisdom and humanity 
alike forbid you to leave untouched the fatal root from which endless civil wars 
will spring. To say that the abolition of an oligarchy does not mean the ex- 
termination of the oligarchs is needless to those who are in their senses, and 
useless to those who are not. 

The on'y political and social interests threatened by the abolition of 
slavery are those of the great planters, who are the sole authors of this war, 
and of the half-century of political strife, crime, and misery of which this war 
is merely the culminating point. To say, as a recent writer does, that "five 
millions of whites will be deprived of everything that makes life valuable," is 
mere raving. The mass of mean whites, who do not own slaves, will exchange 
a life of parasitic sponging on the great planters, slave-driving and slave- 
hunting, for one of honest industry and independent proprietorship of land. 
The whites of the towns will certainly not be losers by having, as they will in 
the long run, the peopled opulence of free industry around them instead of 
the desolation of slavery. Perhaps even the planters themselves may find that 
life has something valuable in it besides slaveowning : but these men have 
played with the blood of hundreds of thousands for a great stake, which they 
will probably lose, and they must abide the fortune of the die. 

The slaveowners, be it remembered, are the authors of the revolution. 
With then own hands they have thrown their "institution" into the revolu- 
tionary cauldron, in the hope of aggrandizing it, but at the risk, of course, of 



13 



bringing it to destruction. The constitution had set local bounds to slavery: 
they have risen to break through those bounds, and to open to it unlimited 
extension over a continent of which the law is Freedom. The constitution 
leaves the gate of mercy open for emancipation ; they have risen to close that 
gate for ever. The constitution secures to the emancipated African his freedom : 
they sweep him, wherever they lay hands on him, back into slavery. The 
Emancipation Proclamation is, in fact, but the counterblow to the Confederate 
Constitution. 

Those who contend that Mr. Lincoln exceeds the rights of war in inter- 
fering with the political and social system of the States which he is invading, 
ask us, "whether, when the Duke of Wellington was at Paris, he might have 
gone down to the Palais de Justice, and taken the place of the civil or crimi- 
nal judges sitting there V The answer is, that to change the judicial system 
of France was no object of the war. But to change the political government 
of France was an object of the war, and the political government of France 
was accordingly changed, by the deposition of the Bonaparte dynasty and 
the restoration of the Bourbons. 

That the Federal government in launching a great measure of war and 
revolution should not strike its friends as well as its enemies has been thought 
a great proof of inconsistency and hypocrisy. It is difficult indeed to meet 
such a charge. 

Besides the military and jjolitical necessity, however, the emancipa- 
tion of the slaves is promoted by a large party among the Federals as a great 
act of humanity and justice, which the government has the opportunity of 
performing* through the unprovoked rebellion of the slaveowners, in exercise 
of the rights of war. And this we are told is a fanatical outrage on all the 
laws of reason and civilization. " Slavery," says a writer to whom I have 
before alluded, "is a very bad institution, and produces all sorts of bad results; 
but have men ever in any part of the world, since they acquired that small 
degree of practical common sense which is implied in most forms of modern 
civilization, undertaken to evangelise each other by war — and not only by 
war, but by wars of extermination ? Idolatry, polygamy, and a variety of 
immoral habits prevail to a terrible extent in China. It may be doubted 
whether the Tartar dynasty have either acquired their power rightfully or use 
it well. Does it follow that as soon as we happen to be insulted by the 
Chinese we ought to undertake to revolutionise the whole country, depose the 
Emperor, turn out the mandarins, and pass an Act of Parliament making all 
the people Christians according to the Church of England ?" To say nothing 
of the exaggeration involved in the words "war of extermination," it is clear 
that the writer of this confounds together three totally distinct things — Avars 
against misbelief, wars against immorality, and wars against oppression. 
Wars against misbelief have been entirely given up by civilized nations, for 
reasons which it is needless to detail. Wars against mere immorality, such as 
injures none but the sinners themselves, are, for equally good reasons, very 
seldom made ; though we have used our mi ! itaiy possession of India to put 
down some immoral customs ; and an American government consisting 
of Southerns took, if I mistake not, some pretty strong measures against the 
poligamic community which is now settled at Utah. But wars against oppres- 
sion and for the relief of the oppressed are, I trust, very far indeed from 
being numbered with the past. They would seem, on the contrary, to be the 
only wars which a civilized and Christian nation is perfectly justified in 
undertaking ; since all other questions, whether territorial, commercial, or 
diplomatic, are capable of being settled, and ought to be settled, by arbitra- 
tion. They will continue to be undertaken, I hope, by those to whom 
Providence has entrusted military power, as often as the cup of human pity 
and indignation overflows ; and certainly it is not far from being full when 



four millions of human beings are kept in a state literally not less degraded, 
and more cruel, than that of beasts of burden, and when the authors of this 
wrong declare in the face of outraged humanity their resolution to extend and 
propagate it to the utmost of their power. 

Nobody proposes to "evangelise" the slaveowner, to compel him to 
subscribe to abolition doctrines, or to put an end to his indulgence in any 
vice by which his own moral welfare alone is affected. All that is proposed 
is to emancipate the slaves. If Mouravieff were an atheist or kept a harem, 
we should not think of interfering with him ; but we should rescue the Poles 
from his tyranny if we had the power. 

England herself crusades against the slave trade, and it must be rather a 
technical code of ethics which approves the treatment of slave traders as 
pirates, and denounces as ,£ monstrous impudence" the application of the 
same name to those who are guilty of slave breeding and all the other outrages 
on nature, decency, and humanity which are parts of the Southern system. I 
trust the King of Dahomey does not read our Southern publicists, or he will 
be furnished with some arguments in defence of his "institution," against 
which it will be difficult to contend. He will protest with great effect against 
being evangelised by our cruisers, and show, perhaps, that the practice of 
man-hunting produces in the man-hunters strength, enterprise, and courage-, 
qualities which must command our esteem The upper classes of this country 
in going over to the side of slavery from hatred of" the American common- 
wealth, have forgotten to change the glorious institutions and to cancel the 
proud history of their country. 

England treats slavery as a mere wrong, and sets free every slave that 
comes within her jurisdiction, without compensation to the master. But 
some of her sons have admitted, under cover of feeble and hypocritical 
protestations, the doctrine that man can hold property in man. And the 
consequence of their change of mind is that they represent the Federals to 
themselves as attacking a perfectly united nation, not perceiving that the mass 
of the labouring population in the South is on the Federal side. That 
population, no doubt, besides being black (which seems not much to the 
purpose), has hitherto had no votes ; but if it is argued that those who have 
no votes are not part of a nation, we shall be landed in some extensive and 
sinister conclusions 

The same state of feeling prevents our seeing that the American govern- 
ment owes a duty to its negro subjects in the South which it is not warranted 
in relinquishing on the slaveowners' demand. The slaveowners are attempting 
to sweep off four millions of Americans from the protection of the State. Is 
the State tamely to acquiesce in that proceeding ? Did England acquiesce 
when two foreigners were taken by force from the protection of her flag ? 

It would be wrong on all accounts to put the case of the Northerns with 
regard to this matter too high. They sold themselves to Slavery for a great 
Union. But as their object was not wholly selfish or ignoble, their Good 
Angel did not leave their side ; and one day the Fiend, in an access of suspi- 
cious fury, tore their bond. In the dreadful war which their own past sins 
have brought upon them (and into which, let me say, no one saw them plunged 
with more dismay than I did), they may not be victorious so far as to conquer 
the whole of the South, but they will have wrested vast territories, the des- 
tined seat of future nations, from the dominion of the Slave power, and dis- 
pelled for ever the vision, in itself by no means chimerical, of an empire of 
cruelty and lust stretching ' ' from the grave of Washington to the palaces of 
Montezuma." What is still better for themselves and for the world, if they 
have the root of greatness in them (as the whole history of the war, read by 
candid eyes, shows that they have), they will rise from this struggle a regene- 
rated nation. 



15 



The sudden transition of the negro race from slavery to freedom is, no 
doubt, a tremendous revolution, and one the course of which will be watched 
by every cool-headed and right-minded man with the deepest solicitude ; but 
it would only have been more tremendous the longer it had been delayed. 
The necessity which leads to the enlistment of negroes as Federal soldiers 
seems to come as it were by a special providence to raise the dignity of 
the down-trodden race, fit it for its new position, and redeem it from that 
gulf of degraded indolence which generally lies between the cessation of forced 
labour and the awakening of the desires in which sustained industry has its 
spring. Perhaps there is nothing in history more signally attesting the 
Justice that rules the world than the manner so unexpected, yet so natural, 
in which God has visited this oppressed race, and cut, through the tyrannical 
passions of the slaveowner himself, the knot which, as I believe, no mortal 
wisdom could have untied. — I am, &c, 

GOLD WIN" SMITH. 

Oxford, Oct. 10, 1863. 

Postscript. — Since the above was written, Mr. Whiting's important 
treatise on " The War Powers of the President" has come into my hands. 
I quote from it a passage which meets the argument that compensation was 
afterwards paid for the slaves emancipated by us in the American war, under 
the judgment of the Emperor of Russia as arbitrator. "Great Britain, for 
the second time, used the same right against us in the war of 1812. Her 
naval and military commanders invited the slaves, by public proclamation, 
to repair to their standard, promising them freedom. The slaves who went 
over to them were liberated, and were carried away contrary to the express 
terms of the treaty of Ghent, in which it was stipulated that they should 
not be carried away. England preferred to become liable for a breach of 
the treaty rather than to break faith with the fugitives. Indemnity for this 
violation of contract was demanded and refused. The question was referred 
to the decision of the Emperor of Russia, as arbitrator, who decided that 
indemnity should be paid by Great Britain, not because she had violated the 
law of nations in emancipating slaves, but because she had broken the terms of 
the treaty. 



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